Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica #1 Review

DC has been doing a lot of crossovers recently, and a lot of them are surprisingly good. The winning formula is to get a team that passionately cares about both properties and puts them together in a meaningful and fun way. From the outside, it seemed like this crossover had that creative team with the legendary DC writer Paul Dini behind the book. In reality, this book played out more like Paul Dini quickly rushing through plot points so he can go back to polishing his emmys.

In this crossover Harley and Ivy leave Gotham and head to Riverdale so they can stop the construction of a shopping mall on a swamp. Their plan involves kidnapping the daughter of the developer, who happens to be Veronica Lodge. While the overall plot of what brings these characters together for a zany adventure is solid, the way we go through it is not. The book is fast paced, but the pacing often seems nonsensical. Like Dini trying to figure out how to cover all the plot points with the bare minimum work on the dialogue. The jokes fall flat and every character comes off as unlikable. Desperate to add anything resembling a joke, Dini puts all his eggs in the Jughead. Repeatedly hammering in the character’s desire for food, and the jokes are about as original and funny as a fat guy’s first standup.

The art is largely serviceable, but it’s hard to unsee the massive foreheads that our female characters have been well endowed with. At least imagining that our cast is really Martian Manhunter cosplaying as the DC and Archie girls makes the book more enjoyable.

Even without Paul Dini being behind this dull crossover attempt, this would have been a bad book. But with Paul Dini being behind it, the book also comes with a large dose of disappointment. If you’re looking for a crossover to read, there are much better options on the shelves than this.